


The Perfect Sacrifice

by shootingstarcipher



Series: It's Only A Nightmare [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst, Experimentation, M/M, Romance, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:03:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7528483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shootingstarcipher/pseuds/shootingstarcipher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abandoned buildings are abandoned for a reason.<br/>Dipper should have known that but he didn’t, and that’s why he was nearly killed by a creature he never wanted to set eyes on again and nearly stolen away by another.<br/>He should have listened to Stan when he told him never to go looking for trouble.<br/>Because mistakes are made and while some will come back to haunt those who made them, others will live on for a thousand eternities, spending each one hell bent on causing havoc for an innocent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angels

There’s a fine line between angels and devils, and Dipper Pines was about to learn that. As his sister had once fittingly - albeit randomly - told him, morality was relative. And as such, whether angels are good and devils are bad or vice versa is simply a matter of which of the two one agrees with most. When he first came to Gravity Falls, Dipper wouldn’t have thought twice about naturally agreeing that angels were the epitome of goodness and devils that of evil, but a few months later he would come to find it was a lot more complicated than that.

In fact, shortly after his and his twin sister’s arrival at the quiet rural town of Gravity Falls where their great uncle Stan ran a fraudulent roadside attraction known as the Mystery Shack, a serendipitous discovery he made during one particularly dull, slow-moving afternoon led to everything becoming a lot more complicated for him.

A journal, marked only as journal number 3 and with the front cover depicting a six-fingered hand, had been hidden inside a curious contraption carved into the trunk of one of the many pine trees that banded together to form the forest surrounding the Mystery Shack. The great lengths which whoever had hidden it had clearly gone to in order to ensure it was safe and concealed only served to amplify his curiosity. Mabel was just as interested when he showed it to her, but at the time neither of them truly understood the implications his discovery could have.

For inside the journal was a catalogue of creatures the likes of which neither of the siblings could have imagined possible. Drawings, strengths, weaknesses, as well as detailed accounts of the author’s personal experiences with the beings were included within the pages and were the source of Dipper’s insomnia for several weeks. During the daytime, he and Mabel had their own adventures involving the mysteries reported by the book and they fought any beasts that wished them harm side by side. 

The book told Dipper not to trust anyone at all. Dipper begged to differ. There would never come a time when he did not trust his sister. They would fight side by side or not all; he was determined. And as twelve year olds usually do, they believed they would remain just as close as they were forever, and neither would leave the other’s side. But as real life often does, it decided it was time their dreams were shattered. It would happen one way or another, sooner or later. The time when they would have to learn to fight alone was creeping up on them, because Dipper Pines was about to disappear.

It began, as usual, with the twins’ curiosity - Dipper’s in particular. Against their great uncle Stan’s instructions, they ventured deeper into the forest than they normally allowed themselves to and, after quite a lot of aimless wandering, the two of them eventually came to a tall, chain-link fence, blocking their paths. Behind the fence was a building which, dilapidated as it seemed, piqued their interest even more than the idea of being deliberately kept away from something did.

This is how they ended up climbing over the fence and scrambling towards the biggest mystery they had unearthed so far - a derelict, abandoned building which held within it the darkest secret that town had to offer.

They entered through a door that had already come off its hinges and snuck inside. Dipper went in first, vanishing into the darkness before Mabel’s eyes. She followed after him immediately as if she were connected to him by an invisible string - just like a puppet. Rendered blind by the darkness, he waved his hand around wildly in attempt to search for a light switch. He found one, the familiar bump of plastic against the wall comforting him for a moment, and eagerly pressed the switch in the centre of the plastic square. The room was illuminated by the flickering light from above them, only for the light to fizzle out and die a second later, thus resurrecting the momentarily slaughtered shadows and allowing them to once again engulf the room.

He sighed in response. She groaned. They stuck to the wall as they explored the room, Dipper in front with his sister following behind. They kept track of each other by listening out for their footsteps. It wasn’t difficult. There was no other sound to hear save for the occasional crash of unidentifiable objects when one of them bumped into something accidentally - most of the time it was Mabel.

His hand - which he’d been holding out in front of him whilst the other stayed connected with the wall on his right - collided with a door and with Mabel’s encouragement he pushed it open to reveal another room, this one just as dark as the first. But at least the lights worked. The shadows were brutally exiled once again, and this time it stayed that way until Dipper pressed the light switch again as they left the room.

Now that they could see properly, a million more questions about the original purpose of the building exploded into Dipper’s mind. Mabel was filled with wonder, but only her brother considered the true meaning behind what they saw. This room appeared to have been some sort of surgery. The walls and floor were tiled, but the white tiles which lined the walls were dotted with specks of blood and dust. In the middle of the room stood a bed with white sheets, blankets and a white pillow, and which was not unlike those found in hospital wards. Beside the bed was a rusted metal trolley carrying equally rusted medical equipment.

Glancing nervously at his sister to check whether she was just as frightened and disturbed as he was, only to be disappointed. She didn’t seem happy about what they’d found, but it didn’t look like she was disturbed by it either. Dipper wanted to flee. If he had done, he could have saved himself a lot of pain, both physical and emotional. Unfortunately for the both of them, his fear of being made fun of again ruined his chances to get away lightly.

“Wh- what do you think it means?” he stammered, failing to make his anxiety go unnoticed.

“Is somebody scared?” Mabel teased, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbow. “It doesn’t mean anything.” She turned to look at him and noticed the scared look in his eyes, which only made her grin wider. “Come on, you don’t want to leave, do you? This place is amazing!”

Her brother forced a smile and reluctantly agreed to stay but grabbed her arm, tugging her back towards him so she couldn’t wander off on her own. “Just stay with me, okay? I don’t want you going missing.” He expected more teasing but that never happened, and he liked to think that deep down Mabel was scared too. 

A second later, she was.

They heard footsteps coming from outside the door. It made no sense, because they were the only two people in there as far as they were aware. They hadn’t even been able to find a gate or a gap in the fence. Clearly, no-one was supposed to be in there. It hadn’t been used for years! Mabel switched the light off and Dipper flinched and the sound of the click as the room was plunged into darkness once more. He grasped his sister’s arm again and pulled her onto a low set of shelves that began on the floor against one of the tiled walls and which, thankfully, were large enough for them to sit on if they scrunched their bodies up and hugged their knees to their chests.

While they waited for the footsteps to go away, he considered everything they’d found inside the building, which he was now certain had once been a hospital of some kind. Mabel suggested the possibility that it had once been used to perform experiments on people or animals or other such organisms, but Dipper was quick to dismiss the idea. Maybe it had been a normal hospital - which would explain the medical equipment - but it seemed too straightforward. Besides, why had it been abandoned? It was possible the town had exhausted its budget to run the place, hence they’d been forced to close it down. But there were too many questions still bursting out of his mind. Given all the other secrets the twins had uncovered during their time in Gravity Falls, he seriously doubted that this was something normal.

The door opened slightly - they could hear it - and the sound of heavy breathing filled the room. They couldn’t be sure whether it was their breathing or that of whoever was at the door, or a combination of all of them. They froze their bodies, tensed their muscles, held their breaths and waited. The person - or creature - by the door stuck their head in the gap they’d made and sniffed the air, growling wildly, but seemed satisfied enough that nobody was there and retreated through the door, letting it swing shut behind them.  
Once the sound of their footsteps signified that it was safe for the twins to move again, they fled the building that had perhaps once been a hospital of some kind and considered vowing never to return to it, though neither of them committed themselves to that idea. But as they darted out the door, Dipper thought he saw something and paused for a split second to ponder it before being dragged along by his sister.

He saw something out of the corner of his eye which he quickly discarded as a trick of the light, but in actual fact was something much more sinister than he could have guessed. For that was first time he caught a glimpse of the elusive Bill Cipher, a demonic being that he would first describe as worst kind of devil there was, but would later show him how similar devils and angels could really be.


	2. Mistaken

He should have paid more attention to the tiny details of what he’d seen at the old hospital hidden deep within the overgrown forest. That burst of light which had drawn his attention for just a moment was much more significant than he could have predicted at the time. It was a mistake to dismiss it so easily. That being said, it was one that could have easily been prevented.

While they hadn’t returned to the hospital yet, thoughts and memories and theories of it continued to fill Dipper’s mind several days later. And every so often, he considered the flash of light he’d caught a glimpse of one the way out. It still didn’t seem important, but sometimes he felt he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He was drawn to it, though for no reason in particular.

On this occasion - five days after they’d fled from the old abandoned building in the middle of the woods - Mabel was half-asleep in bed and Dipper was sitting up, reading, though his mind was elsewhere. Really he was focusing on the beam of light he’d caught sight of a few days earlier and whether it was as significant as his intuition told him it might be. He glanced over at Mabel, checked whether or not she was still awake, told her what he was thinking about and asked for her opinion on the matter. She clearly wasn’t as enthusiastic about it as he was, but she answered him nonetheless.

“It’s weird, but do you really think it’s important?” That’s the sort of answer he’d been expecting from her and to an extent, he agreed. The rational side of him - which almost always prevailed - told him to ignore it, but then there was this voice in the back of his mind telling him otherwise - that if he didn’t do something about it soon, something terrible would happen to the both of them. Maybe what it meant was that he’d go mad with frustration if he left things as they were. It would have been much better if that had been true.

But unfortunately it wasn’t. And it was too late now to do anything about it. That night his dreams became nightmares, plagued by horrors he’d never imagined existing.

Wherever he was, it wasn’t home - not his home, anyway. Grimy, stony ground crunched under his feet. A crash of thunder roared above him, setting an army of violent raindrops loose upon him. The rain beat down on him, seemingly sharpening as they grew nearer to him, piercing his delicate skin as they made contact. It felt as if a thousand bullets had hit him at once. He dug his heel into the ground and sprinted forward, lowering his head to avoid getting hit in the face by the sharpened watery pellets, only to crash into something hard a moment or so later.

Something tall and rough. Bark. It towered above him. A tree. More specifically, a pine tree.

“Why so scared, Pine Tree?” a cruel, tormenting voice from behind him laughed. He whirled round immediately, expecting to find whoever had spoken, but found nothing. “You’ll have to be faster than that to catch me, kid.” This time when he turned his head, facing the tree, something golden and triangular was leaning against the tree trunk, though its feet weren’t touching the ground. “Mind you, you almost caught me the other day, remember?”

Dipper just stared at it and blinked, reminding himself it was only a nightmare.

The creature turned to face him properly, and he saw then that it had only one eye and no other facial features, as well as a pure black bow tie just below its eye and a black to hat to match. “You know,” it continued. “At the hospital, just as you were leaving. I know you saw me. And it seems like you haven’t been able to get me out your head since.”

It all felt too real. He knew it couldn’t have been real, although he’d seen stranger creatures than this one since arriving at Gravity Falls and discovering the mysterious journal. 

Regardless, the fact that this one could talk and seemed to know much more than it should have done was testament to the idea that it couldn’t have real - he swore he heard it laugh when that thought entered his mind. It was too articulate, too intelligent, too… human. It certainly wasn’t human, but it felt like in another body, it could have been.

The creature, whatever it was, appeared to disagree.

“I’m much more intelligent than any of your kind, kid, but I suppose I appreciate the sentiment.” Dipper stared at it and frowned; its words had set his mind racing. “And yes, I was reading your mind. I still am.” With that, the creature set his mind to rest, but only for a second before even more dangerous possibilities entered his thoughts. What was the strange being and, if reading minds was so simple for it, what else could it do? “It’s not very polite to keep calling me it,” it said, offended.

Dipper felt inclined to apologise, then hesitated and held his tongue. He wasn’t so sure it deserved an apology, so he answered it aloud instead. “What should I call you then?”

“Bill - it’s my name, after all.” Dipper had already decided he didn’t like Bill, but that didn’t stop him being so intrigued by the strange being. “And I’m a dream demon, since you’re wondering,” Bill added, further piquing his interest. He raised an eyebrow at the demon but nodded and accepted this explanation all the same.

Part of him wanted to turn away and run. The other half wanted to stay and find out more about this alleged demon. If he really was a dream demon, did that mean it wasn’t just a dream, and it was real, at least to one of them? Possibly. He looked to Bill for an answer but received none, so he turned the other away and started walking in the opposite direction of the demon and the tree. He didn’t get very far. Bill appeared in front of him, the pupil of his eye replaced with a bright red hand, commanding him to stay where he was.

“I don’t like using force, Pine Tree, but I will if I have to.” Dipper got the feeling that in reality, Bill liked using force very much, but he didn’t say so and tried not to think about it. “Normally I’ll only come to someone if I’m going to offer them a deal, but I don’t like making deals with kids - you lot have a nasty habit of going back on them - so I’ll offer you something else.” He floated closer to him, his legs dangling from his body and his small black feet never once touching the ground, and his eye returned to normal, indicating his calm disposition.

“You’re bored by the mundane. You live for danger and excitement... so go back to the hospital. I’ll meet you there, and I’ll show you something - not telling you what though, not yet.” He paused, turned his back on him, and spoke again, leaving him with four final words. “You have three days.”

Then he clicked his fingers and vanished, leaving Dipper alone in the barren wasteland of his nightmares. He stared into the empty air the demon had once filled, half-expecting him to reappear at any second. But then the world around him started to shake. The thunderstorm had stopped and it hadn’t been raining for a while, but the rumbles this time came from below him - under the ground. The stony ground beneath his feet opened up and he braced himself for the worst, naturally assuming it was about to swallow him whole. Instead, however, the rest of the world - the tree, the rocks, the murky, starless sky - was pulled into the gap in the ground and devoured.

Everything went black. That might have been because he’d been swallowed by the ground as well, or it might have because everything else around him had been. Either way, he wished Bill would come back for him.

But then light and colour suddenly started seeping back into his world and he found himself staring up at the ceiling in the attic, which he and his sister were using as a bedroom during their stay at the Mystery Shack. He turned his head to look at Mabel. She was asleep. He felt the book he’d been reading before he drifted off to sleep grazing against his cheek; he must have slept with it on his pillow.

Sitting up straight and blinking in attempt to adjust his eyes to the newfound light, he reached for his journal - the book which contained all the secrets hidden within the small town that was Gravity Falls - and flicked through its pages, stopping only when he reached the page he’d been hoping to find. Bill Cipher, it said in red writing at the top of the page. Splatter of red ink - or worse! - littered the yellowed page. There was a black and white drawing of the demon on the left-hand side, complete with his trademark top hat and bow tie. On the bottom of the page was a warning: do not summon at any cost. But he hadn’t summoned him. Bill had gone to him.

At the top of the page was a message he couldn’t help feeling had been written specially for him.

3 days, kid.  
3 days or Shooting Star dies!  
And if you think I won’t really do it, you’re very much mistaken!


	3. Let Me In

Two days had passed. He only had one day left. By this point he’d realised who the fabled Shooting Star was; the only clue was that Mabel wore a sweater depicting a shooting star the day after the demon had come to him in his dream, leading him to the conclusion that the note was warning him of his own sister’s demise.

Every once in a while he paused to consider whether his sister was really in danger, or whether the strange demonic creature was just messing with him and trying to persuade him to meet up with him at the old hospital, but the note had said he’d be mistaken to question it. Either way, he had no intention of putting his twin sister at risk. She had to be kept safe, and if returning to the hospital was the only way to do that, then so be it. He left it to the last day in case he - by some miracle - managed to dream up an alternative solution to his sister’s possible death. However, by the final day, no such epiphany had come to him.

In a bid to shield her from the fear that would come with the knowledge that her life was hanging in the balance, he kept the note and his encounter with the alleged demon to himself. It took every ounce of willpower he had in him to hide it from her, but common sense told him that keeping Mabel safe meant keeping her out of the demon’s plans, whatever they might be. Of course, she was already involved, but he wasn’t going to let her get herself any more mixed up in it than she already was.

He had until midnight to get to the hospital. Stan went to bed at ten o’clock and Mabel was asleep by then. He slipped out of bed, already dressed, and made his way down to the front door, his feet silently padding across the cold hard floor. He let himself out through the door, sent one last solemn glance in the direction of the Mystery Shack, and vanished into the night, heading through the forest and towards the abandoned hospital he never wanted to return to.

The rest of the town’s inhabitants - save for a few bats and owls and other nocturnal creatures - appeared to be asleep, and he too wished he was back in bed and enveloped by slumber. But if Mabel - or Shooting Star - was going to live, he had no choice.

He’d never ventured so deep into the forest on his own before and a part of him wanted to turn back and forget all about the creature who called himself a dream demon and the sinister-looking building that looked as if it could fall apart at any moment. Nevertheless, he pushed on, the torch in his hand shaking as he trembled, its light flickering and threatening to die.

The door to the hospital remained unguarded, except for the fence that surrounded the entire building. He climbed over it almost effortlessly and threw himself down to the dirt-covered ground, half-expecting to find the demon hovering over him when he looked up. He wasn’t there. If he’d had his way, he would have turned around and run back to the Mystery Shack, naturally assuming that he’d been the victim of a cruel hoax. Unfortunately, he knew he had to press on. The evil, tormenting monster from his nightmares must have been waiting for him inside.

And so, fighting off his fears, he entered the lion’s den - or in this case, the demon’s den. 

Sure enough, Bill Cipher soon appeared, his eye glowing with malicious delight as he illuminated the shadows that engulfed the room closest to the entrance. “Well you certainly look happy to be here,” the demon droned sarcastically and then laughed hysterically at his own joke, leaving Dipper to glare up at him in annoyance. All he wanted was for their encounter to be over so he could get back to Mystery Shack as soon as possible and make sure Mabel was alright.

Rolling his eyes and ignoring the triangular creature, he turned away and began shining his torch in the corners of the room the light radiating from Bill didn’t reach. Bill soon put a stop to that, somehow influencing the direction the light from his torch shone in, forcing it to point directly at himself no matter which angle the child held it in. “Focus on me, Pine Tree. I’m the one you came here to see.”

Dipper disputed that. “No,” he snapped, glowering at him. “I came here to protect my…” He paused and changed his mind about what he was going to say. “I came here so you wouldn’t hurt Shooting Star.”

Bill just laughed at him. “You’ve got it all wrong, kid. I wasn’t going to hurt her… I was going to kill her. There’s a difference, you know.” Dipper didn’t know how to respond, so he simply stared at the demon as he laughed even harder, mesmerised by the monster’s insanity. He’d never seen anything like it before. He’d heard of people - or creatures, as he thought of them - who were cold and detached and could kill even someone they’d once called a friend without batting an eyelid, but he’d never actually encountered one before - not to his knowledge, anyway.

Bill told him not to look so scared, but he didn’t say it in a particularly soothing way. In any case, his glowing red eye frightened him even more. Trying his best to forget about his fears and focus on the task at hand - surviving the meeting with the demon so his sister would be safe - he asked why he’d wanted to meet him there, of all places, especially when he could have simply entered his dreams again.

“I needed to test you.” If the demon had had a mouth, Dipper was sure he would have been smirking. He could practically hear it in his shrill, inhuman voice. “And anyway,” Bill continued, floating over to the door opposite the one Dipper had entered by and gesturing for the child to follow. “I said I wanted to show you something, didn’t I?”

Nodding his head, though failing to mask his uncertainty, Dipper followed after him, allowing himself to be lead through a series of doors until he wound up back where he and Mabel had hidden from the unwanted stranger outside the door the last - and first - time they’d been there. He felt sick to the stomach the moment he saw it all. His hand instinctively flew to the light switch - he’d unintentionally memorised its location from the last time - but he stopped himself just before he pressed it and withdrew his hand, dropping his arm to side.

“This place is full of secrets,” Bill told him, spinning himself round to face him. “You like secrets, don’t you?” He studied his imaginary fingernails silently, letting his words sink in, and pretended to be deep in thought. Dipper raised an eyebrow at him and he dropped his gaze from the human’s face to the backpack he was carrying, and gestured towards it, indicating that he should open it. “That journal,” he mused elusively. “You like mysteries. There are more mysteries in this place alone than in that book of yours, and you’ve already stumbled across one of them.”

Dipper’s gaze fell and he examined the floor for no reason other than to avoid looking at Bill. “Me,” the demon said, pointing at himself. Suddenly Dipper felt as if he was no longer in control of his own body and his back straightened up without him meaning for it to and his eyes rolled up, forcing him to look the demon in the eye. “But I’m one mystery you’ll never be able to unravel.”

Releasing the grip he’d cast over him, the demon allowed him to move around again and suggested he take a look around the room, pointing him in the direction of one particular corner (right next to the bed). Dipper followed his instruction without hesitation (not because Bill had told him to, but because he himself wanted to do it) and headed over in the direction of the corner, studying it carefully. There was nothing but dust and spiderwebs and... 

And photographs.

One, to be precise. It was face-down on the floor, poking out from underneath the bed’s metal frame. He slid it out, his fingers grazing the back of it, and picked it up to inspect it further, turning it over in the process. He could feel Bill’s eye burning a hole in the back of his head. He ignored it and concentrated on the photograph. It showed nothing of interest, which is exactly why he found it so interesting - that, and the fact that Bill had obviously meant for him to find it. 

It had clearly been taken in the room they were currently in - or one that was identical to it. In the photograph was what appeared to be the very same bed he was crouching down next to, and a white wall as well as a slightly dirtier white floor. There was nothing else there. There was, however, something he considered extremely noteworthy. In the middle of the bed, the sheets were creased as if being pushed down by a weight - as if someone was sitting on it - but there was nothing there which could have been causing the sheets to crease in such a way. It just didn’t make sense.

After holding it in his hands for a few minutes, staring at it in awe and confusion, he took his backpack down off his shoulders and slyly deposited the photograph inside it, hastily slinging his bag over his shoulder once more the second he’d done it. Bill had been watching him the whole time and he knew it. He was starting to get used to having the demon around, though he had no desire to make a habit of it.

“Find everything of interest?” Bill asked when he turned back around. Dipper didn’t say anything; he simply blinked at him, unwilling to play along with the demon’s games. “Come on, kid. I know you found it. Didn’t you feel me watching you?” After a pause, when neither of them spoke, he answered his own rhetorical question. “Of course you did! You’re not stupid, Pine Tree - not like the rest of your kind. You’re special.”

“I still don’t trust you,” Dipper muttered, unsure of whether he wanted Bill to hear him or not. Regardless of what he wanted, he heard him.

“I don’t expect you to. Still, you must be excited. That photograph could be the beginning of your greatest discovery yet.” He sounded a lot more excited about than Dipper did, though they were both equally ecstatic about it - though for different reasons entirely. “Well, I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting to stick around now, not after you’ve found what you were looking for.” He almost sounded disappointed about it, but he wasn’t wrong; if Dipper had known already the demon was permitting his leaving, he would have run off back to the Mystery Shack minutes ago.

He turned to leave, itching to get away from the demon, when he found himself being interrupted by Bill yet again.

“One more thing, kid.” He stopped, frozen in his path, and his body tensed automatically with fear and anxiety. “Don’t tell your sister about this. You can guess what will happen if you do.” Dipper turned his head to look at him and nodded, visibly nervous but still managing to keep himself steady. “Oh, and Pine Tree? There’s just, something else I want from you.” Their gazes met for a moment and he felt himself being unable to move again. “Let me into your head, kid.”


	4. Graves

Getting away from Bill wasn’t the problem; the demon let him run without putting up too much of a fight, probably knowing he’d come crawling back to him soon. He’d made it clear already that he had no intention of leaving him alone for very long and besides, he was - rather ingeniously - playing on Dipper’s insatiable curiosity for the abnormal and unexplained and they both knew it. The problem Dipper had once leaving the hospital was, however - as well as half-wanting to return to it - keeping everything he’d been through so far a secret from his sister.

She was awake when he crept back into the Mystery Shack and slipped back into bed, attempting to be surreptitious but failing. Fortunately, she’d only been awake for a few minutes or so - which meant she hadn’t wondered or been worried about his disappearance - and Grunkle Stan was still asleep so he had no complicated questions to answer. As he slid down and pulled the blanket over him, he explained his sudden disappearance by telling her he’d gone to use the bathroom, but couldn’t understand why Mabel suddenly burst out into laughter.

“You really do take that thing everywhere, Dipper.” She gestured to the backpack he’d deposited onto the floor on his way in, out of the top of which his treasured journal was protruding. He laughed it off but hastily kicked his backpack under his bed, though thankfully Mabel didn’t seem to notice his nervousness (and if she did, she certainly didn’t appear to be suspicious regarding it). “Goodnight, Dipper,” she groaned, laying back down and curling up, quickly falling back to sleep which is much more than her brother was able to do.

It may have still been dark outside and his body may have been exhausted from lack of sleep, but his mind was wide awake. He lay there for what felt like hours, staring up at the ceiling, his fingers clutching the photograph he’d found in the abandoned hospital (which he’d slid under his pillow without Mabel noticing when he came in), itching to investigate it further. Every so often, he took it out and examined it, but came to no conclusion about it and reminded himself he should have been asleep already, so he slipped it back under his pillow. This cycle repeated itself over and over again until he eventually fell asleep with the photograph hugged to his chest protectively.

When he woke up - late, he noted - the photograph was still safely in his hands and he spent his first half an hour of the day staggering around only half-conscious, taking no notice of the fact that his backpack had been mysteriously emptied during the night until after he’d eaten breakfast. He and Grunkle Stan ate together - Mabel had gotten up already and was out exploring the forest with her two friends, Candy and Grenda - and once he’d finished eating he ran back up to the attic, intending to check for connections between the photograph, the old abandoned hospital and any information contained within the journal.

But to his dismay, the backpack he’d shoved underneath his bed the night before was empty. He scrambled to the floor, frantically searching under the bed in case the journal had fallen out at some point during the night, but it quickly became clear that it had in fact vanished, as strange as that sounded. He told himself it had to be around there somewhere - he was sure it had been there when he got back from his encounter with Bill the night before - and turned the room upside down in search of it, only to wind up empty-handed.

He went back downstairs and sulked for a while, mysterious photograph in hand as he pretended to be watching the TV. There was nothing he was particularly interested in watching on. In fact, the only thing he was really interested in doing was reading the journal, but it was gone and he’d looked everywhere. The only reason for its disappearance he could think of was Bill - if he’d come in while he’d been asleep and stolen it for his own gain, that would explain it, but he couldn’t think what the demon would want with it.

That’s when Mabel marched in. She had her two friends parading behind her as her entourage, and - Dipper raised an eyebrow and practically screamed when he saw it - his journal tucked under her arm as she headed towards the stairs. Leaping out of his seat, Dipper screamed out at her to stop where she was and ripped it from her grasp the second he reached her. She tried to hold onto it but he just managed to tear it away from her, darting back into the living room once he’d succeeded.

She stood there in the doorway with her hands on her hips, glaring at him angrily. “What was that for?” she demanded, prompting a sarcastic comment aimed at Dipper from one of her friends. “We were just reading it.”

“Mabel, you can’t take things from me without me knowing like that! You should have asked first!” Mabel jumped in surprise at the harshness of his voice. It wasn’t like him at all. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have let her borrow the journal if she’d asked, but he hated the fact that she’d shown it to her friends. The journal was meant to be their secret. It had nothing to do with her friends!

“Dipper,” Candy giggled, leaning forward to rest her head on Mabel’s shoulder, causing the other two to giggle as well. He glared at her coldly in annoyance, suddenly wishing they’d all leave him alone. “Have you had any bad dreams lately? About, I don’t know, scary golden triangles?”

Dipper shot a horrified look at his sister, which she took to mean that he was confused about what they were talking about. She gestured to the journal in response. “Some dream demon or whatever. We read about it in there. Apparently he’s really dangerous. Bill Cipher or something.” Dipper’s eyes widened and he grabbed Mabel’s hand, dragging her away and yelling at her friends to go home. Neither of her friends seemed especially happy about being ordered around by him and they complained amongst themselves but did as they were told regardless. Mabel wasn’t happy about it either and shook him away as soon as they reached the kitchen.

He had no idea what to do or what to say. Mabel was outraged and yelled at him for making her friends leave and dragging her around like she wasn’t her own person, but he just stood there, dumbfounded. Setting the journal down on the kitchen table, he flipped through it, stopping at a page nearer the back of the book which had a sketch of Bill drawn on it. He hastily read through the disappointingly small amounts of information regarding the demon and sighed. Mabel was as good as dead and he blamed himself for it. If he’d taken better care of the journal and hidden it somewhere other than his backpack, maybe things would have been different. Now all he could do was sit and wait for Bill to take his sister away from him.

But how could he do that? There had to be something he could do to stop it from happening. When Bill had appeared in one of his dreams a few nights previously, he’d mentioned making deals. And he had said he wanted to get into his head - whatever that meant. He’d give himself up for Mabel without hesitation, even though he didn’t trust the demon or have any desire to be around him at all. If bending to his will would save his sister’s life, then so be it. But this was all mere speculation. He didn’t know whether there really was a way to save her, but if there was, he’d do it.

Sighing, he shook his head and sunk into the nearest chair. “Mabel, I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what he was apologising for but that didn’t matter to him. He just wanted her to be safe.

She sat down beside him and nudged the journal in his direction. “No, I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have asked before I took it.”

For the rest of the day, Dipper acted like nothing was wrong but it was plain to see that his heart wasn’t in anything they did. He kept the journal with him all day as they went off exploring in the woods as they usually did but he didn’t read any of it. Instead, he devoted his time to Mabel, knowing it wouldn’t be long before that was nothing more than a distant memory.

The only time he took the journal out to read it was that night as they climbed into bed. He read through the demon’s page again, contemplating whether to tell his sister what he knew - seeing as it wouldn’t make a difference to her fate now that she’d discovered him for herself. But she didn’t know he had anything to do with the old hospital they’d stumbled upon a few days ago and that might have been what Bill was referring to when he told him not to say anything to her. There might have been hope after all.

There wasn’t.

Bill was there when he woke up at midnight. Mabel wasn’t. Her bed was empty and her belongings had vanished from the room. It was as if she’d never existed.

“Come with me, Pine Tree.” Dipper’s head spun and he struggled to focus on the demon but eventually managed to concentrate on him. He was hovering above the wooden floor at the bottom of the bed, firing a cold, yet somewhat amused glare in his direction. “I’ll take you somewhere you’re bound to want to get a good look at.” Before Dipper had the chance to even open his mouth, Bill clicked his fingers and their surroundings dispersed, re-grouping a moment later to display an entirely different environment altogether.

Dipper’s bed had gone and he was standing barefoot on a vast expanse of grass, the black, moonlit sky looming above him. Bill was still floating in front of him, his expression unreadable. Ominous-looking trees impended over them, casting shadows over them and binding them to the darkness. The stretch of dark grass was littered with large grey stones protruding from the ground and the sudden realisation of where they were made Dipper feel sick to the stomach. Letters and phrases were etched into the stones, the one they all had in common being ‘R.I.P.’ 

Bill gestured proudly to the gravestone next to him. “You like it, kid? I had it specially made,” he added, sounding almost miserable when Dipper stared at him in horror. He tapped the stone with his golden cane - which magically materialised in his left hand - and pointed to the message which read ‘Mabel Pines, who died because of her foolish brother’ and eagerly awaited his response.

“You actually thought I’d like this?! You’re sick.” His voice was a shout at first but then he quietened down, convincing himself not to make things worse - if that was possible.

“I sure am, kid,” the demon laughed, apparently entertained by Dipper’s disgust. “But I’m all you’ve got right now. You can either side with me” - his gaze fixated on the gravestone beside him - “or end up like someone else.”

Once he’d managed to calm himself down, Dipper decided to stay and listen because Bill was right, he was all he had. “Fine,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. “What do you want from me?”

The demon chuckled maliciously at him. “I like you, Pine Tree. You remind of myself when I was younger, and because of that I’m prepared to make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Dipper’s ears pricked up at that and he stared up at him expectantly. “You’ll be just as powerful as me if you accept… Listen, kid, I want to form an alliance with you.” Dipper’s initial reaction was to refuse but then he remembered what was at stake and stopped himself. “I can make you an equal, but… you’ll have to prove yourself to me first. I don’t need an answer right away,” the demon mused. “So bye bye for now, Pine Tree.”

He snapped his fingers again and Dipper’s eyes flew open.


End file.
